


the humans and the beasts

by AptlyNamed



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, I don't know what I'm doing, Self-Harm, and lowkey suicidal thoughts but only super briefly and beyond that just implied, stay safe please lmk if anything else needs tagging, uhh i'll tag more if i write more, uhh if there's a tag for using hunger as a method of self-harm lmk, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-29 01:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16734024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AptlyNamed/pseuds/AptlyNamed
Summary: After the events at the subway, Credence Barebone wakes up. He's not sure he was supposed to.





	the humans and the beasts

**Author's Note:**

> uhh this is entirely self indulgent.  
> title's from heaven by cne for now  
> if i write more i'll probably somehow swish around to some heavy hurt/comfort but for now all there is is Angst my dudes. also i might get nagini in here too since i'm lowkey mad that she had maybe two lines in the new movie.  
> all very hypothetical tho as see: very self indulgent  
> final also: i haven't got a super great recall of the first movie so there may be handwavy stuff? feel free to set me straight in the comments

Credence wakes up slowly. Little things register and pull him out of dreamland; his ribs won’t let him pull in a full breath, the skin of his right arm burns- oddly, his back doesn’t ache at all, but Credence isn’t holding his breath on that lasting. 

It’s not the worst way he’s had to wake up, but still he has to wake. He tries to cling to the dream he’d been having- something fantastic, he knows to his bones, something with real live magic and horrible things too, but with just enough good things to justify the terrible. It was a nice dream. 

Still. As always, Credence wakes.

There’s a band of light in his eyes, made weak and hazy by the New York air. He squints and shifts up. Blinks once. Scrubs his eyes. Blinks again.

He’s not in the Barebone’s house. It’s some abandoned house, interior destroyed beyond recognition yet walls and door still somehow standing. Amid the debris, the little spot of the floor he’d been curled up on is the only untouched part of the room. He has the nasty suspicion he’s to blame for the destruction. 

The dream, he realizes, may not have been a dream. Huh.

He puts his head in his hands and doesn’t start to laugh. He doesn’t cry, either. It’s just sound- quiet, quiet pushed down sound leaking out between his hands. 

Credence sits, and does his best to muffle his screaming. 

-

It lasts too long, as always. It was always too long for Ma, and the beating would resume if he couldn’t tie down the noise quickly enough. He was never quick enough.

He feels too aware of his skin as he stands, too aware that underneath a monster lurks. Obscurus, he thinks he remembers a wizard screaming as it tore through them like wet paper. He swallows hard, feels it press up and shift against his skin. 

He’d always wondered why Ma hated him, and now he has his answer: Monster.

He can feel the fit begin to restart at that, and digs his nails deep into his palms and forces his thoughts away. Clenches his eyes around the burning and just- moves. Hand on doorknob, twist, pull, move feet, and go. Focuses on breathing, on walking.

It’s an abandoned apartment building, he notes in a small removed corner of his mind. Goes down the staircase, goes through the entry way, goes into the street.

People. It’s late afternoon, so there is a crush of people walking the streets, going about their days. Without even thinking, Credence’s shoulders are pulled in and up. He ducks his head down and scuttles through the throngs. 

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since- since. He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep. His stomach suggests days, plural, though. He clenches a hand briefly against his waist before relaxing it. The pain in his stomach is welcome- it cuts through and soothes the still pressing edges of the fit. The other pieces of injury- his arm, his ribs- don’t bare much note. He’s had worse. 

So what now? He wonders. His previous life is gone, by his own hand. A sick bit of monstrous pleasure at that, quickly burnt away by guilt and shame and fear. Where to, what to, questions piling onto questions. Easily brushed away, though. 

Something in his gut tugs. His feet follow a path, and hell, what else is he to do? Whim is as good a path as any.

He follows the tug in his skin. He goes.

-

There’s no sign of any damage on the street where his feet take him, no matter how long or how hard Credence stares. No exposed subway, no road torn up by the monster thrashing in his throat. He feels frozen, trapped. Was his dream a dream after all? Was it fake, fake, fake, is Ma waiting, expression going more and more stiff the longer Credence is away? Is Ma waiting. Is Ma.

He digs his nails so deep into his palms he wonders if he draws blood. He digs them a little deeper yet, just in case. The noise is still pressing against his eyes, so he bites the inside of his cheek and a bit of his tongue too. His breath still shudders. 

Was it real? Or was it just a hopeful daydream, where the woman who saved him once actually came back, and remembered his name, and spoke kindly to him? Where she brought a friend who spoke kindly too, who wasn’t loud, who listened too? Where he finally, finally, finally got to d-

“Credence?” 

Credence’s entire body seizes. He jerks to his right and- it’s the man, who was a friend to the woman who saved him once. He looks startled- or shocked, maybe, dropped whatever he’d been holding a second ago. He sounds- he sounds-

Credence doesn’t think. He just runs. Runs and runs and runs, until his back stops itching, until his hands stop shaking, until his breath can only come in ragged, steady pants. And then he keeps running. Until he doesn’t recognize the streets, until he doesn’t recognize any building at all. He turns down an alleyway, and just- falls. His knees hit the ground hard, but it’s fine. He curls up against a brick wall, panting heavily, and lets the white noise howling in his mind peter out. The monster scratches, but he tightens his hands over his forearms and grits his teeth and says no, no, no, no, until it shuts up. Until everything shuts up, and it’s blessedly quiet in his mind for a bit. He floats. His arm, his ribs, his stomach- they’re nice notes in the silence, giving it texture. It’s nice. 

He doesn’t move until dark begins to fall, in agonizing indecision- does he want the man to find him? He was nice, before, and he made Credence’s mind quieter, and- but Credence is a monster. Monsters hurt nice things. Monsters only deserve bad things, and everyone gets what they deserve in the end. 

The Lord works in mysterious ways, Ma used to say, usually in reference to why Credence existed, but Credence never understood that. The Lord works in very obvious ways- or maybe He just writes in larger print for Credence.

He sits, breathing, a couple minutes more, before the thought of the nice man finding him and Credence destroying him makes him jerk himself upright and onto his feet. He sways a bit, the lack of food beginning to take a hefty toll. Steadies himself on a wall, and keeps on. Wanders out into the street. He’s managed to stop a few blocks before a park, he realizes. 

He goes into the park for lack of any reason not to, and that the open streets made the back of his neck crawl. The trees are nice, against the darkening sky. Only a couple throngs of people, moving as aimlessly as Credence, with a few exceptions. The smell of fried food sits faint on the air. His eyes slide over a statue unobtrusively sitting on a stone bench, and that would’ve been that, had the statue not winked at him. 

He startles. The statue, after a moment, very deliberately winks again. Does he- should he run? 

The statue winks a third time, and Credence notices its eyes aren’t aimed at him, but some empty middle distance. Its hand, resting on the bench, twitches a finger up to him on a set rhythm with the wink. When he glances around surreptitiously, no one else seems to notice the statue doing anything out of the ordinary.

Credence chews his lip, thinking. There’s- he’s not sure, but- maybe he’s supposed to touch the finger? And that will do… something? Credence has vague, vague memories, memories so faint and old they may well be dreams but- he remembers holding Ma’s dress, and seeing a woman wave at a statue, and it wave her through the stone wall it rested on. A stupid, nonsensical dream, he’d thought, but- other dreams had proven to be real. Maybe this one too? 

He thinks he hears- no. Maybe the ghost of the hope of hearing the nice man’s voice again, mixed with the echo of it when he saw Credence, a happy sound of wonder and thankfulness, meshes together. Lingers like the nicest and worst threat Credence has ever experienced in his life.

Regardless. It makes his decision for him.

He nearly trips over himself stumbling toward the statue. He keeps his eyes averted from its dead stare wink, and touches its finger.

And he regrets it almost immediately. The world shifts, and seizes, and explodes into colour and sound. His feet stay on the ground, he’s sure, but still the world wobbles and wavers around him, and he falls. 

His eyes close to the onslaught, and he doesn’t reopen them.


End file.
